A mutual fund is just the connecting bridge or a financial intermediary that allows
a group of investors to pool their money together with a predetermined investment
objective. The mutual fund will have a fund manager who is responsible for investing
the gathered money into specific securities (stocks or bonds). When you invest in
a mutual fund, you are buying units or portions of the mutual fund and thus on investing
becomes a shareholder or unit holder of the fund.

Mutual funds are considered as one of the best available investments as compare
to others they are very cost efficient and also easy to invest in, thus by pooling
money together in a mutual fund, investors can purchase stocks or bonds with much
lower trading costs than if they tried to do it on their own. But the biggest advantage
to mutual funds is diversification, by minimizing risk & maximizing returns.